[COFF] [SPAM] Re: Architectures -- was [TUHS] 68k prototypes & microcode

[Dave Horsfall]

On Fri, 5 Feb 2021, Larry McVoy wrote:

> I think Intel is sort of in the same place Sun was.  Fat, dumb, and 
> happy with the profits they are making and can't see what is coming.

I guess we'll find out soon enough; there is a history of companies "too 
big to fail" of failing.

> It just didn't make sense to have $20,000 Sun workstations when a $2,000 
> PC was at least half as good.  I advocated for SunOS on x86, to me, it 
> was the operating system that delivered the value, everything just 
> worked on SunOS, for any other OS you were doing the configure dance. 
> Offer SunOS on x86 and capture the low end market.  The East coast Sun 
> did the road runner but West coast Sun sneered at it, patches for x86 
> were not processed very fast, if at all.  It's a shame.

I actually got to play with a Road Runner at a Sun conference (its 
hostname was "milpitas" of course) and came away impressed that one of the 
best OSes ran on the worst possible architecture :-)

> If Intel doesn't want to make money off of the cheap, but very high 
> volume, $20 SOC, Apple has shown that it has the chops to make a cheap, 
> fast, and power sipping M1 chip.  Pretty impressive and if I were Intel, 
> I'd be nervous.  Apple has shown they can switch architectures pretty 
> painlessly repeatedly.  The x86 lock in isn't much of a lock in these 
> days.

Well, when you're big enough to be able to make both your own HW and SW 
then things will go smoothly (which is why my MacBook works so well).  I 
look forward to Brian Krebs' "Patch Tuesday" announcements; I can only 
think that it's some form of "Stockholm Syndrome" despite there being many 
free alternatives.

Heck, I remember in the days of the Pee-Cee "grey imports" that if it 
didn't run Flight Simulator then it was illegal; shortly afterwards if it 
didn't run FS then nobody would buy it...

Ah, "schadenfreude" is such a beautiful word :-)

-- Dave